


Teeth

by Rococospade



Series: Champions of the Pit [1]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: "Mommy can I keep him?!", Adopted Sibling Relationship, But he's trying to get there, By some definition, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kafei is that kid that keeps bringing home dangerous animals, Sheik (Legend of Zelda) is a Separate Character, Sheik isn't okay, Sibling Fluff, melodramatic as anything else I've written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21695359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rococospade/pseuds/Rococospade
Summary: Sometimes, he was utterly convinced Kafei lived in another world and just came back to theirs for kicks. Or maybe to confuse the locals.Sheik's older brother has some interesting opinions about what is right and what is good. Also about intelligent hiding places for stolen kids and runaway princesses...(A character study of Sheik trying to survive a war, hiding a princess, and a sibling that missed the class on honorable behavior.)
Relationships: Sheik and Kafei (Legend of Zelda), Sheik and Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Champions of the Pit [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1486709
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> A self indulgent character drabble with lots of sibling fluff (for a given value of siblings and fluff). Set in the Champions of the Pit verse. I've been sitting on this for a month, because I really wanted to post it on my birthday!
> 
> Hey, so I should really note that Sheik displays some alarming behavior in here in reaction to others, including Kafei. Sheik's home before he lived in Kakariko was neither happy nor healthy and he's still carrying that with him. Kafei wants to help, but unfortunately his methods for doing so (like, murder) alarm the hell out of Sheik. So please go in forewarned.
> 
> Kafei is not a crossover character from Majora's mask, but an AU character based on him. So the personality is not really the same, though I tried to carry over as much as I could! More characterization notes at bottom, and I hope you enjoy!

The house had a light on when Sheik returned to Kakariko. He hadn’t been expecting it, but then, he hadn’t lived there alone. It was just that Kafei was away for work so often that Sheik could sometimes fool himself. 

He stopped outside the door and waited in silence. 

The wood eased open and light spilled out. A mask painted with vivid patterns peered out of the crack to examine him; he looked back at it unflinching. 

“Is that Sheik?” Someone called from further inside. “Don’t keep him in the dark, let him in. I’ve made enough for all of us.”

The door swung open. The creature that had answered it stepped back. Sheik saw the magic under its skin, shifting and whirling like smoke formed into a body. He saw what passed for its blood. He saw its flesh, pretendi ng at being Hylian, all the little layers a monster could cloak itself in. 

“You still haven’t introduced us,” Sheik said, focusing past the abomination and on the man working over the cooking pot. The smell of spices wafted around the house; Hyrule was su ffering drought and famine. There was no money for a commodity like that, and Sheik’s cabinets were bare of such niceties. 

The man over the cooking pot was a Sheikah, or at least a half-blooded one- his skin was pale, and his hair was a deep blue that had never failed to catch stares at the market. He was focused more on the meal than on Sheik, but the look he sent in Sheik’s direction was friendly. “That’s not an accident.” He murmured. His voice didn’t lend itself for singing, but it was pleasant if he w anted it to be. When he spoke to Sheik, he wanted it to be. “Are you coming to dinner or not?” Sheik had always listened better when it was. 

Sheik took a deep breath. Was he really ready to close himself in a room with a corporeal demon, even for the chan ce to see Kafei? His stomach gurgled, forcing him to amend,  _ and for a meal with more flavor than merely what hunger can supply? _

The creature hovered on the edge of his vision, skin and bone, magic and smoke and hellfire. The lights that danced on its skin  did not reflect on anything in the room, but Sheik saw them the same as its guise. His eyes - any Sheikah’s eyes - could peel back the layers. 

The night air was cold. He could hear the faint moans of the undead, crawling from their graves to gather at the town gates. Magic cut into the stonework kept them at bay, but they would sit just outside and carry on the worst racket if they determined anyone to be out past dark. 

He made up his mind and walked through the door, letting it fall shut behind him. He h eard the bolt slide into place, though none of them had raised a hand to make it so. 

There were far more candles flickering away than he could really afford. The light painted their home in an appealing way, warm and gentle.  Kafei smelled like blood and iron and like the  sul f ur of a hot spring. Sheik supposed he’d tried to clean up on his way home. 

“I bought new candles.” Kafei murmured, “Don’t worry about those stubs.”

“We’re in a war. We should be rationing.” Sheik said, sitting across from him and put ting his back to the beast. He heard it hiss with displeasure. 

Kafei smiled back at him. “And yet it is no war of mine, nor yours if you… decide otherwise.” His gaze flickered down, pointed; Sheik flushed and pressed a hand over his collar as if Kafei cou ld see past clothing and skin to the magic Impa had wrought. 

(His eyes, any Sheikah’s eyes, could peel back the layers.)

“There are things I have to do. You understand that.” Sheik pressed.

Kafei sighed. “So there are. But the accident of your birth - tha t’s no burden of yours.”

“And yet I will bear it.” Sheik took his hand away from his breast, but crossed his arms in a hopeless attempt to keep Kafei from looking closer and seeing whatever stains of magic and wounds remained from his trials over the past weeks. 

“One year since this war started.” Kafei picked up a wooden bowl to ladle sauce and meat into, “I was hoping you’d give up and go south to live with mother. Come with me. Something.”

Sheik’s gaze hardened, and his voice came out maybe a little crueler than he meant. “Would you leave me alone to defend myself against great evil?”

Kafei's eyes flickered over him, nonjudgmental. Sheik flinched anwyay. “Of course I wouldn’t,” Kafei said, “Unless it was something I knew you could conquer. But that’s why I’d rather you’d come with us, you know.”

Sheik shrunk back on himself. “You can’t ask me to do something you’d never do yourself.”

Kafei smiled down at the bowl. “No. Suppose I couldn ’t.” He sat back and opened a pot to scoop still-steaming rice atop the sauce in his bowl. “How is she faring, then?”

Sheik lowered his face and let out a sigh. “Poorly. I would rather she go to someone else.”

Kafei nodded. “I suppose Impa has her hands  full, though, keeping this place from falling apart.”

“So I expect.” Sheik accepted his bowl with a quiet _thank you_ , and took a naan to scoop the food up. “I didn’t… I don’t…” He floundered, tried to wave his hand. Almost gave up explaining himself. “I don’t think I’m old enough to d o this, Kafei.”

Kafei twitched an ear towards him.

“It’s just- I’m barely older than her.” Sheik said, “Barely past the shift. But our bodies are so  _ different _ already.”

“Teach her to change, then.” Kafei suggested, leaning his cheek on his hand. “You can do it by now. Can’t you ?”

Sheik’s cheeks flushed. “I-” Well. He could, of course. But there was a polite fiction that one did not learn forbidden arts until they were at least adults, in Kakariko. 

Sheik generally got around such things by going through Kafei’s scrolls and books while the man wasn’t home. Kafei was, after all, a nominal adult. 

(Kafei’s mother had gone over the basics with both of them years ago, when tensions with the Valley Gerudo seemed to only be rising. It was illegal, certainly; but before she’d been a guar d’s wife she’d been a thief, and the law mattered less to her than her sons’ survival.)

“It’s forbidden.” Sheik pointed out when the silence seemed most stifling. 

Kafei glanced over his fingers at him. “You are outside of the castes. Who is going to punish you?”

Traditionally, that would be the job of others i n his caste, foremost his family. But… if his only family was Kafei and- the person he was protecting. Then. Then perhaps it wasn’t worth fearing retribution for. 

Maybe it didn’t matter if he had to fear retribution anyway. The king was in the dungeons of a captured castle. T he Sheikah were stretched thin. Maybe Sheik shouldn’t worry about what anyone else thought at all. 

He looked at Kafei, someone who had never worried about what others had thought at all. 

_ Am I ready to become like you? _

Kafei looked up from dabbing his naa n against the edges of his bowl, sopping up sauce. “My. You have the strangest look on your face right now, little brother!” He narrowed his eyes, grinning foxlike - as if Sheik had done something terrible and pleasing. “Want to tell me what you’re thinking? ”

“No.” Sheik said, very certain. “You’ll only go and twist it around.”

Kafei laughed at him. “Such a little one,” He leaned forward and put his right hand on Sheik’s hair to ruffle it. Sheik glowered at him.  Kafei seemed pleased by it.  “But you have teeth,” 

He did not always smile so much - indeed, Sheik could remember a time when Kafei scarcely smiled at all. 

But things had changed at the end of the last winter. Not long after Kafei started working in the mountains his heart had seemed to thaw. Sheik didn’t understand it. He wanted to be comforted - but seeing his brother come alive in the middle of wartime Sheik felt unsettled instead. 

Kafei was not meant to be cheery. He was meant to be cold and a little mean and always thinking of how to get around, how to get ahead, not smiling at the world. 

Maybe that strange masked horror was a bad influence, for all that Sheik had never seen it smile or raise its disguise at all. (This was unfortunately not their first meeting, just the first time Sheik witnessed Kafei allowing the b east  _ into their house. _ ) 

“Everyone has teeth but Granny,” Sheik frowned at Kafei. This was the sort of change he complained about; Kafei used to at least pretend to care about logic and reason. “I’ll not be long in staying. I need to see to other tasks. Will you board up th e house when you go?”

“What makes you think I’m going, little brother?” Kafei cocked his head, affecting a look of puzzlement that Sheik knew very well was fake. 

(He reacted to it anyway. Damn him.) “Well- that is-” There was nothing left in them for Kakariko besides the little house they now sat in. Kafei’s father  had died not so long after the war had broken out. His mother had gone back south to live in the trees with the tribe of her birth, unable to convince her eldest to come with her. Nor was she able to ask Sheik to go; he had obligations to Hyrule that would no t be easily fulfilled. 

They left a little house, to their son of birth and their son of obligation. It was nice enough if one didn’t mind the ghost of memories. A bit of colorful stitching on the drapes, a cracked teacup that used to shine with pride. Thi ngs that said a happy family had lived here, once.

“You’ve been going regularly for the past two years,” Sheik said, “Why should I expect differently?”

“Well.” Kafei said, “You asked me earlier. Didn’t you?”

Sheik frowned at him. “I’ve asked you many things tonight. Pray don’t make me sort through each of them just after eating, Kafei.” Sometimes, he was utterly convinced Kafei lived in another world and just came back to theirs for kicks. Or maybe to confuse the locals. 

Kafei’s smile became a secretive thing, sharp eyeteeth on display aga inst pale flesh. His eyes danced in the candlelight; they were the red of the blood moon, the color of hell flowers, the flash of a poisonous insect. “ _ How can you ask me to do something you wouldn’t. _ ” He murmured, tongue flashing pink and strange between h is lips. “I never meant to. I merely wished to… stockpile.”

Sheik’s eyes flickered, disbelieving, to the candles Kafei was burning out all around them. “Kafei.” His voice came out - he aimed for ‘measured’, ended on ‘dripping with dread’. “What did you do. ”

Kafei smiled and didn’t answer him. The demon brushed past both of them, Sheik tense and staring and his brother as pleased as a cat with a canary, and went under the curtains that sectioned off their bedrolls. Sheik watched it with mounting alarm. 

_ If h _ _ e sold his soul for tallow and spices I might  _ actually  _ have to kill him.  _

“I bought a few more cots.” Kafei said, “I’ll be reinforcing the windows. I think some bars and heavy shutters will do nicely.”

Sheik got up from the fire pit. “Kafei,” He said, headi ng for their bedding, “ _ What did you do.” _ He threw back the curtain.

The demon grumbled at him. It had ignored the fresh bedding to sprawl out on Kafei’s like an insolent cat. Another strange mask was on the floor past that - the demon toed at it in apparen t agitation. It looked - a little like the visage of a half-blood, though Sheik wasn’t sure that was what it was meant to be. 

Kafei had indeed bought more cots. They took up nearly all of the back wall, almost as if he were anticipating half the village s leeping in their house. 

“Since you won’t drop this ridiculous mission,” Kafei said from behind him, “And leave the country like a sensible person. I thought. Well! I’ll just have to make sure he has a safe place to lay his head. And I suppose she must, as well - for all that I don’t care about her, you do. And I suppose she’s only yet a child.”

Sheik’s eyes felt infuriatingly hot. He blinked a few times, trying to dispel the feeling. “You… surely we can’t afford this.” His heart thudded behind his ribs, sl uggish and heavy. Like it was trying to thaw itself. 

“I’ve been taking good jobs.” Kafei demurred, “It’ll just be a little vacation, anyway. We can manage six years. … if we can’t, I’ll just have to step out again, here and there. But you’ve kept alive th is year.” He settled a hand on Sheik’s shoulder. Sheik hadn’t heard him move at all.

(And he couldn’t smell the difference, when over twenty years of Kafei’s scent permeated the house.) 

“I trust you,” Kafei said, leaning forward and settling his cheek ag ainst Sheik’s head, “To do what it takes to survive. Teeth, claws and venom. Let nothing be beneath you.”

Sheik nodded once, tears threatening to spill. “Teeth, claws and venom.” He agreed, voice quiet, curling his fists at his sides. “I can bring her here to hide her. You mean it?”

“We should probably dig a basement,” Kafei said, “If you really want to do that. Something we can actually hide - the house is too easy for guards to search.”

“The well is too broad.” Sheik protested.

Kafei hummed. “That’s true. The magic that wreathes that place, though… should ke ep her out of his notice.”

* * *

The basement hadn’t been Kafei’s worst idea to date. (That probably went to the time he’d suggested they hide the child he’d brought home in the crawlspace, rather than admit their custody of him to the guards searching Kakarik o. Sheik didn’t have it in him to call out Kafei for that, though. It would be a poor return on a rare act of selfless kindness.) But the basement… had also been far from his best plan. For a start, there were monsters in that basement. Constantly. 

Zelda  had gotten a great deal of practice working light magic simply because it wasn’t feasible for her to fetch an escort every time she wished to use the toilet. She was a very accomplished mage by her thirteenth year, and while the people of Kakariko who knew of her believed it was from her bloodline… well… some of it probably really just went to living next door to a charnel-house which insisted on letting its inhabitants reanimate. Another problem with the basement was that… well, Kafei had never actually t old the village leader that he was digging down into the catacombs below Kakariko. The less people that knew a secret the more likely it could stay unknown, he reasoned. Sheik had eyed him askance for that, then gestured to the horrid demon Kafei still ref used to share the name of. The demon had waved at their scrutiny. Kafei had insisted it didn’t count. 

But. The Well was a hallowed place - or a cursed place - there was not much of a difference in Kakariko. And no one really entered it, because there wasn ’t much to be gained from doing so that couldn’t be gained a little more safely - and with less redead encounters - elsewhere. So it was sort of a useless empty place, a jar waiting to be filled, or so the reasoning went. 

So when eventually, like all majo r settlements of Hyrule, a monster summoned by Ganondorf made an attack on the village… they thought to use that well. Because  _ unlike _ all other major settlements of Hyrule, Kakariko had Lady Impa. She defeated the monster in a narrow battle, though she cou ld not kill it. Instead she trapped it with seals and prayer, for she excelled at sealing magic beyond the ability of anyone other in living memory. 

Unfortunately, the container she had chosen was that empty jar that wanted filling, Kakariko’s cursed Well . Because, as far as she knew, it was in fact  _ empty.  _

The beast took its time exploring its new dwellings. All in all, Zelda was not aware of her new roommate until the wee hours of morning, when something like the scent of fire awoke her. She’d grabbed he r bow a moment before the north-eastern wall had crumbled, and a beast she could only see in flashes forced its hissing, grumbling, pulsing way through. She’d shot it twice and fled up the ladder with its hot breath against her back. 

The monster very near ly ate Zelda, who escaped the basement still in her dressing gown and threw herself over the breakfast table to snatch up hammer and nails, so that she might seal the trapdoor shut.

Kafei and Sheik had been having chai before going to gather herbs (some could only be gathered before dawn). Needless to say, they had not expected an adolescent half dressed noblewoman to nearly land on them, and Sheik had spilt his tea. The  _ crash-BANG  _ of the beast slamming itself into their floorboards sent them scrambling to hel p her. Sheik said prayers over the hole and tried to work a magic seal, heart pounding in his chest. Zelda shoved him out of the way and took over to far greater effect. A furious roar echoed up from their sleeping place when the beast realized its new es cape route was no more than a dead end, and continued to roar throughout the morning. No one got any more sleep, and Kafei’s pet demon laughed every time the monster’s cries left the rest of them jumping.

Sheik hadn’t let Kafei live any of it down yet, even though it had been almost five years ago. Though, in Sheik’s defense… who  _ would  _ let go of something like that?

Zelda was… more forgiving of it. Sheik didn’t think she needed to be. Didn’t think she shoul d be. She’d barely even held a grudge about it. 

But maybe she understood hearts better than Sheik, sometimes, or maybe she just understood  _ Sheik and Kafei’s  _ hearts better than Sheik, because she had only - meekly - told Kafei he had done his best, and tha nked him. 

Kafei had seemed almost as stunned as Sheik was cross (“You almost got her eaten! How dare you laugh about it, Kafei!”) but he had softened, after that, like he’d realized what Sheik had known from the moment of her birth, that Zelda was soft an d small and theirs and needed protecting. 

“You are thinking too much.” Kafei said, eyes shut. It broke Sheik from his musing. 

“You are not thinking enough.” He responded from habit more than consideration. “What is it now, impulsive one?”

Kafei had the a udacity to laugh at him. “Tell me what troubles you, that I might ease your mind.”

They were in the thick of a war prophesied to last seven years - and no, Sheik was not to know that, but what was Zelda going to do? Hide it from him? - and Kafei offered him solace. Unbelievable.

“If I tell you I fear the demon king, you will go and kill him?” Sheik asked, meaning to jest, afraid in some small animal part that Kafei would try it. 

Kafei grinned at him, a crooked wicked smile that promised nothing and everything. “I’ll rip his throat out for you, my little one. But I do not think he is wha t ails your mind.”

Everything ailed Sheik’s mind. 

“Why do you care so much about what happens to me?” Sheik asked him. Kafei blinked, and the smile fell off his lips. He looked almost… taken back, like Sheik was asking something unthinkable. 

(He looked l ike Zelda confronted with something new and a little scary, something she knew she didn’t recognize. It was a strange resemblance, it disconcerted Sheik, Kafei was not supposed to look like that.)

“Because you’re  _ mine, _ ” Kafei said, with the sort of proprie tary offense that Sheik had killed nobles for playing at. “Because you’re important, because what happens to you matters.” He leaned forward and bared his teeth, a mouthful of sharp back-curved blades. “Why? Who is making you ask?" A touch of hellfire entered his voice. " _ I will kill them.” _

Sheik  reached out and put his hand on Kafei’s forehead to push him away. Kafei made disgruntled noises. Sheik told him, “We’re not even blood.”

“I chose you.” Kafei took Sheik’s wrist and pulled his hand away, but didn’t let go. He frowned at Sheik. “You chose us. The blood  of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.  _ You are mine,  _ Talib, and we are yours. That is why I care, that is why you matter. Because we both agreed that I would, and you do.”

Sheik swallowed around something unpleasant. “… I’m supposed to be t he wordsmith, you know. Between us.”

Kafei peered close at him, then cracked a smile. He took Sheik’s hand and laced their fingers, squeezed his palm. “It’s hard to speak sometimes. Let me pick up the slack for you, little brother.” He leaned closer - this time, Sheik did not push him away - and pressed his nose to Sheik’s crown to nuzzle him. “I would still know why you are asking.”

_ And, if necessary, murder someone for  _ making  _ me ask.  _ Sheik thought, a little wry, but didn’t say so. “I wondered why you don’ t care about Zelda, except for that she is important to me. It was only - me trying to understand the difference. I do not doubt my importance, just… wonder about how you choose, from one person to the next, who to care for.”

Kafei’s nuzzling slowed, but p ast a brief pause he did not stop entirely. “I care about Zelda.”

Sheik frowned at him. “In relation to me, or for her own merits?”

“Eh.” Kafei leaned back to peer at him through one eye. “Both? I mean. I gave her the time of day because you love her, but  I’m attached now.”

Unhelpful creature. “How did you decide you were attached to me at all?” Sheik pressed.

Kafei pursed his lips. “Is this what mother meant when she called my questions heavy?…”  Sheik frowned at him, and Kafei shook his head and held up his hands for peace. “No, don’t start, I promise I’m t hinking about it.”

Sheik waited for him to think about it, annoyed and concerned. (Concerned, mostly, because he hadn’t seen the demon all day and that meant it was probably waiting to unveil something new and horrible that they’d have to deal with before  the day was out.)

“Remember when we met,” Kafei started, “And you were afraid of me?”

“… I was afraid of everyone.” Sheik said, uneasy. “The pogroms were going. Mother was often angry, and her husband was… unhappy, also.” He’d been taken to Kakariko as par t of a delegation to speak with Impa. It hadn’t been the first time he’d been there, but it was the first time he’d run away from his escorts to explore alone. It had been new and scary, but there were people who looked like him everywhere. The town tasted of magic - not only Hylian magic but Sheikah magic, and dead magic. 

Kafei nodded. “I could smell it on you.” He said, “Before I’d ever seen you. I thought there must have been an injured animal, and I was trying to find it. But the creature I found was  another Sheikah!” He ruffled Sheik’s hair. 

Sheik glared at him, but Kafei hunted gods and monsters and Sheik was only a small thing beside them, so his annoyance did not make the man flinch. 

“A tiny, scared Sheikah.” Kafei leaned backed a little, gave Sheik a conspiratorial smile. “I thought I’d make a game of it, you know. I wanted to see if I could make you trust me. I wanted to lure you out to prove I could do it.”

Sheik stared at him, baleful. “You are an awful person and an incorrigable liar. You have not spent over a decade on a long con.”

“Of course I haven’t,” Kafei agreed, happily. “And I am both of those things, you are right. But in this case I am telling you the truth. When I was speaking to you, so gently and quietly, it was only a game to me. I was testing myself.”

Sheik tried to decide if that stung. But his mind felt numb to the wound. “I am a game.”

“You were _meant_ to be a game.” Kafei agreed, his smile  falling to something softer and fonder. “But then you trusted me. I don’t recall if anyone had ever trusted me without me dangling something in front of them before.” He crossed his arms and turned his gaze away, the strange smile playing around his mouth. It was a look Sheik had not seen for a long time, not since before their father’s passing. “It was the first time I managed to steal trust without using a carrot or a stick, certainly.” 

“So I was an easy game.” Sheik said, the words feeling strange and s tale in his mouth. That one managed to hurt his scarred heart a little. 

“Too easy.” Kafei agreed. His fingers twitched, squeezing his arms. His voice gained a strange quality: like what he was saying bothered him, or pressed down on some unseen bruise. “ You needed someone else  _ so badly. _ ” His eyes narrowed, and Sheik had the jarring realization that Kafei was hurting. Kafei who would happily distance himself from any wound, and strike back at whatever dared attack him with twice the force and venom.

(Maybe he had missed something. Maybe he needed to watch more. Maybe, maybe…)

“No one’s ever been stupid enough to need me. I didn’t know what to do with it.” Kafei said. “I didn’t - want to hurt you. And you still smelled scared. So I took you home.” He turned  back to Sheik and gave him a watery smile. “It’s stupid, right? It’s an amateur move.”

Sheik’s chest hurt. “Pretty stupid.” He agreed. “You could have gotten everyone executed.”

“Yeah.” Kafei managed to turn the smile into a grin. “I thought your mom was g oing to raze the town when she couldn’t find you.”

“She wouldn’t have.” Sheik said, licking his lips. “Her control was better than that. Maybe just the house.”

They shared a laugh with more breathless relief in it than mirth.

“Probably lucky dad talked her down. ” Kafei muttered. 

Sheik nodded an agreement.  “Probably. So you came up with that stupid ass plan of hiding me in the floorboards because you got attached to a mark?”

Kafei’s smile twisted into something apologetic. “Yeah. I try not to get attached to anyt hing. I can keep my head on straight, think around corners that way.”

Sheik’s head jerked. He looked at Kafei, searching his face for the lie. Kafei smiled back at him, open, sheepish. A little sad. 

“You get stupid ideas,” Sheik said slowly, “When you get attached. You’re not lying?”

“Were I only.” Kafei shook his head. “I come up with all sorts of stupid notions when I decide to love something, or someone. It’s much better not to.”

His heart felt strange. Sheik pressed a hand to his chest and focused on his br eathing, willing himself to slow down,  _ we aren’t fighting anything we aren’t we aren’t.  _ “Is that why you can kill lynels for bounties without a scratch, but you can’t come up with a decent place to hide a princess. Is  _ that  _ really why, Kafei?”

“Don’t go yel ling it.” Kafei put up his hands and managed to look offended even with shiny wet eyes. “I have a reputation as an emotionless monster, and I want to keep it! People pay better when they think you’re inhuman.”

Sheik shook his head in disbelief. “I hate you so much.” He breathed, brightening. “I’m telling Zelda you’re attached.”

Kafei lost his smile. “Don’t you dare. She needs to stay on her toes.”

Sheik backed away from him. “I’m telling her and there’s nothing  you can do about it because you love  _ both  _ of us and we’ve got you.”

“Sheik! Get back here!” Kafei tried to grab him, but Sheik ducked out of reach and turned tail to bolt. 

“Poor fox if you can’t catch one hen!”

“I know where you sleep, you brat! Don’t moc k me!”

Sheik heard Kafei running behind him and bolted through the back alleys, intending to escape in a grotto or a tree or some other secret place. His brother had found him before, so he didn’t doubt he’d be found again - but he was happy to make Kafei  work for it in the meantime. 

(And while he was hiding, well. He could push Zelda into wakefulness long enough to tell her what she’d missed.)

**Author's Note:**

> That is absolutely Majora following Kafei around and at some point I might even explain myself regarding his being there. 
> 
> Characterization note: about Kafei! In Majora's mask, all the familiar people we meet have familiar and unfamiliar traits. For example Koume and Kotake are still witches, but friendly and live in the woods making potions instead of raising a king to conquer the nation. We don't get much info on Kafei directly, but we can see that he might be prone to extremes (his... entire quest) and there's some background info that he was a Bomber as a kid, implying a strong sense of justice. Overall he seemed to be set up as a token heroic character (token because his heroism... doesn't really go far, though it does affect several quest lines in Majora's Mask). So I kind of went with the idea of the Kafei of Hyrule, if he exists, being in the opposite direction - strong sense of personal ethics that he's decided for himself (like Majora's Mask Kafei, if you want to take his refusing to see Anju as a reflection of values instead of as a failure of them) and determined (again, like the source material) but also dangerous, wild and violent. Enough so to keep demons on their toes. His behavior is not coincidentally inspired by real life foxes, which can be sweet derps or dangerous predators dependent on personal temperament and a given situation.   
> Majora is... NOT an AU version of the character, though.


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